


Relief in Waking

by misshoneywell



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, F/M, Tumblr: promptsinpanem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:52:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2846750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misshoneywell/pseuds/misshoneywell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peeta’s never let a bit of hard work get in the way of meaningful traditions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relief in Waking

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings: Graphic violence, major character suffering and sexual content in a disturbing situation.

The sun is just pushing thin bars of light through the edge of the curtains when he pulls on his socks and boots, carefully double-knotting the laces into secure loops. His lips twitch into a smile as he thinks about Katniss and the little raspy laugh she always reserved specifically for this morning shoe ritual, endlessly amused at his persistent childhood habit.

 _Peeta!_  He can hear her tease out his name, can feel her running a hand through the haphazard waves of his hair indulgently.  _You’re so responsible._

It’s come in handy, though, this little quirk— more than once in recent times. It’s just not safe to take a spill, to wipe out for even a second over careless shoelaces. To be sprawled and vulnerable on the pavement.

He stands and fiddles with the coffee pot, debating whether or not to make a cup and sharpen his sleep-dulled senses. There’s enough grounds left for two, maybe three more brews, but after that he’ll have to either go without or venture farther from home than he’d like. At least, not yet. It hasn’t come to that quite yet. There are still resources to choose from, enough for him and Katniss.

He flexes his fingers and casts a longing look at the all but barren kitchen cabinet. His hands itch to make something in the pre-dawn light, his baker’s instincts screaming at him to roll out dough for fresh bread, to sift and mix and measure, but instead he just tugs on his sturdiest pair of leather gloves and secures them tightly up his arms as far as they will reach.

He has to go out for breakfast today.

"I’ll be back," Peeta calls out hoarsely, his voice echoing back to him like an unwanted friend.

He grabs a metal baseball bat from the umbrella rack and peers out the peephole of the back door that leads to the alley behind their building. He taps his fingers against the solid wood and nods to himself before carefully unlocking the door and slipping outside, quietly pulling it shut behind him. He eases down the security grate for extra measure— overkill, probably, as the population has dwindled significantly in this area— but they’ve had looters break in before, the bakery storefront below their apartment a shining beacon for the hungry and the desperate. Katniss can easily hold down the fort, but he’d rather not take any chances.

He glances both ways down the short alleyway before tracking toward the street. He grimaces after emerging into the hazy sunlight. It’s all but impossible to shake off the steady pull of despair weighing him down as he takes in the cracked windows and dismal display of holiday decorations hanging like secondhand dreams from buildings long abandoned, many of them yawning open with doors yanked from their hinges in silent screams, hastily packed bags strewn across lawns and street corners. He side steps a broken bottle and stops, his eyes trained on the ground. He pauses.

A grime-splattered pacifier draws his eye. His unwilling gaze follows a dark, streaky trail leading behind a dying azalea bush in front of the pharmacy, an impossibly tiny shoe and shreds of pink material dotting the landscape like breadcrumbs. He squeezes his fist and hurries ahead, no time for playing Hansel and Gretel.

His eyes are sharp, trained to look for other heartbeats. He spies a few ruffling curtains in his peripheral vision, but he knows that behind those curtains are weapons held by skittish hands. He leaves them alone.

He has three blocks to go before he’ll arrive at one of the last stores that he knows for certain will be stocked, and every footstep he takes is filled with painful memories of happier days. His lips turn down sadly as he passes by The Hob, a restaurant where he had his first real date with Katniss almost a decade ago, fifteen-years-old and sweating through his starched white shirt, pulling at his tie nervously as he smiled across the table at his best friend, the pocket money he’d borrowed from his dad burning a hole in his dress pants.

Their first date had been during the snow-capped, idyllic holidays of their close-knit community, The Hob all strung up with fairy lights and tinsel and holiday banners then, too— all of the local businesses were cheerful participants of the most anticipated tradition in their city. It was a magical night that always held a special place in both their hearts, and it devastates him now to see the The Hob in its current condition, a burnt-out, hollow shell of what it had once been, with smashed Christmas lights draping the building’s historic stone facade like war-battered shrouds.  

The only silver lining that he holds close is that Katniss isn’t with him to see it, and it’s thoughts of her that push him along the street, thoughts of lying in their warm bed together, of stroking her dark hair…

… _as she pressed a kiss to his collarbone, curling her small body into his side and making a little noise of contentment in the back of her throat._

_“I love it when you play with my hair,”  she said, practically purring when he scratched his blunt nails across her scalp._

_“I know,” he chuckled, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. “You practically beg me to do it every night.”_

_“Excuse me,” she said indignantly. “You’re the one who can’t keep his hands-”_

_BAM. BAM. BAM. BAM._

_Katniss jumped in his arms, knocking into his chin as she hastily sat up._

_“Ow,” he muttered, smiling at her reassuringly when she touched his jaw in absent apology. She frowned toward the bedroom door and fisted the bed covers in her hand._

_“Who the hell is that?” she questioned, annoyance lacing her words. “It’s almost one in the goddamn morning on Christmas.”_

_BAM. BAM. **BAMBAMBAM**._

_“I don’t know.” He shrugged, reaching over and turning on the bedside lamp. He peered at his cell phone, but he didn’t see any texts or missed calls. “Maybe it’s Rye being drunk and stupid. Didn’t he say he was going out on a holiday pub crawl tonight?”_

_“Yeah, but Rye would call or text,” she said slowly, “and…I just don’t feel- wait, what are you doing?” She scowled as he stood and pulled on pants and a shirt._

_“Someone is at the door, Katniss.” He looked at her, confused at the stern bite behind her words. “They could need help.“_

_“I just don’t feel good about this,” she said with uncharacteristic unease, his fearless girl looking up at him under black eyelashes. She pulled her knees up to her chest, her face troubled. “People have cell phones, Peeta. And whoever that is-” BAM. “-is probably a drunk idiot that will just move on to the next door when we don’t answer._ ”

_“Katniss,” he said disapprovingly, sliding on a pair of bedroom shoes._

_She huffed, her arms crossed over her chest. “Why are they knocking like that? We can hear them all the way upstairs.”_

_“I don’t know,” he started to say, but then someone screamed. Someone was_

—screaming.

Someone is screaming a few blocks away, the shrill and panic-filled shrieks echoing throughout the sky. He takes off into a run, veering left down Seam Avenue. Only a part of him twinges with regret at the realization that it’s taking him dangerously off-track from the store where his much needed food supplies are located. This is more important.

His feet pound the pavement, and he wishes for the millionth time that he had been blessed with Katniss’ super stealth. He hears the blood-curdling scream again and rounds the corner of an apartment building toward the noise, skidding to a stop when he sees the owner of the distress call.

It’s a wispy young woman, probably no older than himself. She’s thin beyond normal levels of starvation, streams of dark hair gathered around her face as she attempts to wedge herself into a ball behind a low-rise courtyard gate, the only thing that separates herself from the man trying to claw his way toward her face. He’s too large and bloated to squeeze himself through the small space, but two others are closing in behind him now, and it’s only a matter of time before one or all of them simply topple over the gate and rip her to shreds.

Peeta sets his jaw and walks steadily, picking up the pace as he creeps behind them. He yanks on the thick scarf knotted around his neck and secures it all the way up to the bridge of his nose. He can never be too careful with contaminants.

Now. “Which one first,” Peeta mumbles, pointing the baseball bat thoughtfully. He quickly decides to take out the largest threat, raising the metal bat and swinging it with as much force as he can muster, using all of his considerable upper body strength to bring the weapon crashing down onto the largest man’s head. It sinks into the side of his skull with a sickening  _thwack_ , black rivulets spurting out of the cracked dent the bat left behind.

The man spins awkwardly on tree trunk legs, and Peeta thinks it’s a testament to the times that he doesn’t even flinch at the gaping hole where the man’s lips used to be, or at the single row of cracked, ragged teeth with red, fibrous chunks wedged between the gaps.

Instead, he calmly rears back and whips the solid metal across the man’s face again, his head finally cracking open like an egg against a bakery mixing bowl. The man lands with a wet, squelching thud onto the brown grass below.

“Oh my  _god_ ,” the girl moans weakly from behind the gate, but he barely spares a glance toward her as he quickly turns his attention to the other two people who are now very interested in him, skittering toward Peeta with surprisingly quick shuffles.

He raises his bat again, faltering for only a moment when he sees that one of them used to be female, its blonde hair matted black with dried blood and crusty slivers of gunk and grime, one eye socket cavernous and bare while the other gleams at him with blue-streaked hunger. A filthy purple bra, probably bought from the store she worked at according to her nametag, peeks out at him through her torn blouse.  _Glimmer_ , her tag reads. She’s staggering closer now, too close.

Peeta exhales a breath, silently apologizing to her and her friend as he rains the bat down on them, systematically bashing in their skulls when they drop to the ground, only stopping once the twitching of their limbs does as well.

He finally turns his attention to the shivering human girl, wiping his face with a clean patch of his jacket-covered upper arm. “It’s okay,” he says with kind urgency, approaching her carefully. “But you have to get up now, okay? More of them will be coming, sooner than later, and we don’t want to be here when they do.”

She stares at him with absent horror, blinking up at him with traumatized green eyes. “My husband,” she whimpers, her hands raking down her face violently. “I want my husband!” she suddenly screams, and he flinches when a crow caws back loudly, bursting into flight from a window ledge and gliding off into the sky. He envies its easy freedom.

“Listen-” he starts, crouching down in front of the gate.

“Finnick! FINNICK!”

“Wait,” Peeta interrupts her, his eyes wide at the familiar name. “Finnick? That’s your husband?”

Her eyes slide to him. “Yes,” she whispers, rocking back and forth. The girl is deathly pale, and looks as if she’s on the verge of collapsing.

“Are you…Annie?” he asks gently, taking quick looks over his shoulder every few seconds.

Her mouth drops and quivers. “ _Yes_ ,” she sobs. “Yes, I’m Annie.”

“I know Finnick. I helped him,” he says urgently. “I can take you to him right now. He’s with my fiance, in our house where it’s safe.”

She stares at him a moment more, her eyes filling with hope and clarity before dulling again. “Safe,” she repeats mechanically, laughing to herself in eerie high-pitched peals. “From the zombies.”

“Don’t say that word,” he returns sharply.

A bellow and thudding footsteps mixed with spine-chilling shrieks echo from somewhere in the near distance, and Peeta grabs her hand. “Do you want to see Finnick?” he asks, his blue eyes pleading. “Because we have to go  _now,_ Annie. I don’t want to leave you, but I want to see my girl again.” *

She looks at him warily, searching his face. He holds his breath, wincing when the bellows sound as if they are right around the corner now.

 _That’s it._ He squeezes the baseball bat so tightly that his knuckles turn white. This is going to slow him down considerably. _She’s leaving me no choice. 3, 2, 1-_

He exhales in sharp relief when she stands on shaky legs, and he hesitates only a moment before grabbing her hand. “We have to run, alright?” He gives her an imploring look when she doesn’t respond. “Annie, do you understand? We have to run. Don’t look behind us, just  _go.”_

They take off then and make a frantic path down the street, panting as quietly as possible so as not to draw anymore attention to themselves than need be. But Peeta knows from experience that it’s futile now. He doesn’t quite understand how, but once a pack of two or more of the those  _things_  become aware of human prey, it’s as if it awakens the entire city.

He curses when Annie trips over the uneven curb, the thudding steps of a horde echoing not far behind. She cries out in pain, looking up at him in panic.

“My ankle,” she whispers. He reaches down and helps her up, half-dragging and half-carrying her the last block back to the apartment. He will  _not_  leave her behind.

A grinning plastic snowman leers at them as they hustle by, and Peeta grits his teeth as they finally turn the corner to the alleyway of his home. He lets go of Annie, who holds herself up against the brick of the building as he struggles with the metal grate, finally lifting it and opening the door. He insistently pushes Annie in and slams it behind him, locking it and pulling down the inner metal protection slat as well. He almost never feels the need to use it these days -he’s learned to be  _so_ careful- but this was too close a call to risk anything less.

“Finnick!” Annie calls out, making crazed circles in the bakery kitchen. Peeta grabs her shoulders, staring at her intently.

“Shhh,” he says with low urgency, holding a gloved finger close to his lips.

They stand there for a few tense, terrifying moments, silent as the grave as they wait for violent bodies to launch themselves at the wooden door, but it never comes. Annie looks around the kitchen, taking in his Christmas tree and decorations with a slightly perplexed expression.

“Thank God,” Peeta mutters, walking over to one of the industrial-sized bakery sinks. He drops the bat inside along with his gloves. He’ll wash them later. But for now…

“Peeta, where’s Finnick?” Annie is asking him, and he turns around, schooling his features. She reaches out a hand and touches a Santa figurine, her finger pushing it slightly off track, leaving a half-moon of dust in its wake.

"Don’t!" he says so raggedly that she jumps, her face crumpling. "I’m sorry," he apologizes, his jaw clenching.

"Where’s Finnick?" she repeats, her eyes searching the room.

“He’s downstairs, in the basement,” he says, all steady reassurance again. “It’s safer down there, and it’s where we keep the extra food.” He grabs a set of keys hanging on a hook in front of a metal door and quickly unlocks it. Annie looks at him in confusion for only a moment, following him down the darkened staircase, calling out Finnick’s name.

He holds onto Annie’s arm so she doesn’t fall, but his feet have made this path many, many times. He could do it in his sleep. He’s already done it in his nightmares.

“Thank you, Peeta,” Annie babbles in front of him. He quickly leads her through a cramped hallway space. “Finnick! Finnick!”

“Just a few more steps,” Peeta says encouragingly, his hand trailing across what he knows are quickly dwindling food shelves.

“It’s so dark,” Annie says, her voice suddenly quiet. There’s a rustling of chains, and a low growling moan. “Peeta, wha-”

He flicks on a light, and she blinks rapidly as her eyes adjust to the room. Her mouth drops open in a silent scream as she stares into the left corner. Slumped against the wall is a fleshy, decomposing sack with copper colored hair staring back at them with unseeing eyes. She doesn’t see what’s to her right, twitching and vibrating with rabid hunger.

_“Peeta,” Katniss said, trailing after him down the stairs. “This is a bad idea, okay? I don’t even care that someone was screaming, this is too fucking creepy.”_

_“I told you to stay upstairs,” he said impatiently, wincing at the stormy look on her face when he peers over his shoulder. “Sorry.”_

_Bam. BAM. BAM. The door rattled with intensity, and they stared at each other for a long moment. He thought he could hear a siren in the distance._

_“Help me!” someone shrieked, and Peeta shook his head, moving with a purpose toward the door again. Katniss fumbled with the phone in her hand, quickly pressing some buttons._

_“Katniss, get back,” he said, grabbing the baseball bat from the umbrella rack. He unlocks the door. “Go upstairs, okay?”_

_“Peeta!” Katniss said, fear in her voice. He turns his head the same time as he turns the doorknob. “Peeta, 911 is busy! Something’s wrong-”_

_The door exploded open, and chaos entered._

Annie screams her husband’s name, just once, before Peeta pushes her with a hard shove to the right. Annie shrieks as clawed hands rip at her sides, dragging her down to the ground and tearing into her flesh.

“Hi, Katniss,” Peeta whispers, feeling a small twinge of remorse as Annie’s noises finally die in her throat. He slowly backs away, knowing he has about an hour of time to prepare.

He jogs upstairs, quickly cleaning off the blood-stained bat in the sink before placing it back into the umbrella rack. He made the mistake once of leaving it to soak, and Katniss had been full of confused questions. He refuses to waste any more time than he needs to today. He has no idea how much time they’ll have together, something that he agonizes over daily. It seems like she’s lucid less and less now. Yesterday he had only three hours with her before…the.. _sickness_  had taken back over.

They used to have at least twelve hours, but as time passed, Katniss’ sanity dwindled with each new day. He thought that if he could just get the freshest kills, the warmest of blood, an  _active_  brain, that it would help turn back the hands of time, but nothing is working now. It was driving him insane, to the very brink of madness, whatever thin grasp of humanity that he himself had left drawing to a close with every minute he lost with Katniss.

He makes certain that the decorations and the house are in order, that everything looks okay. That everything is just  _so._ He walks over to the Santa figurine and pushes it back into place after brushing away the dust. He turns on the vintage record player that had belonged to his father and puts on Nat King Cole’s  _Greatest Holiday Hits_ , a long-time favorite of both him and Katniss. Finally, he steps into the kitchen and pulls open a drawer, carefully pulling out a wrapped box.

After he climbs the stairs and sets the box on the nightstand, he wonders if two people would help her more next time. If he could just manage to somehow find two survivors and trick them into coming back…

He punches the wall in frustration. He wishes that Gale were still alive, Katniss’ best friend and a genius at snares, an expert at trapping animals. And aren’t people a lot like animals? Gale would have helped him.

But Peeta is fairly certain Gale’s dead. Almost everyone in this town is dead. It worries him, because without fresh meat, Katniss can’t regain her humanity. He wishes he understood the science of it all, but it’s far beyond his mental grasp. He doesn’t even understand where the infection came from in the first place. It didn’t take long for the television to go out, followed quickly by the radio, leaving Peeta completely ignorant of the outside world. There’s definitely no one left at the hospital that he can defer to for guidance. In all of his travels in the city and first-hand experience with the undead, he’s never come across anyone like Katniss.

He suspects it’s because Katniss was only bitten once, just one infected bite to her shoulder before Peeta massacred every last fucking monster that invaded his kitchen that night. He should have listened to Katniss. She fucking  _knew_. She fucking-

He swallows hard and sits down on the bed.

“The undead,” he mumbles.  _He hates that fucking word._  Zombie. All of it just means Katniss is  _dead_.

No.  _Not dead_ , he tells himself, rocking back and forth.  _Not dead._ Just infected.

God. If he thinks about it long enough, it drives him slowly insane, red flashing lights behind his eyeballs that only clutching the back of a chair or driving a shard of glass into his knuckles can cure. Katniss is  _infected_.

_It started pretty fast, the infection._

_Katniss pressed against a wall and watched in shock as Peeta fended off three maddened home invaders, scarily strong and only stopping when Peeta bashed them in the head. He dragged their bodies out into the alleyway. Peeta barely had time to come back inside and lock the door before he was almost rushed by another gang of infected people._

_“What’s happening?” Katniss cried, wincing when he worriedly touched her wound._

_“They fucking bit you,” he whispered, rushing over to the medicine cabinet. He made quick work of sterilizing her wound and wrapping it in gauze despite his shaking fingers._

_“Peeta,” she said faintly. He looked up. “I don’t feel so-” She trembled violently, white froth pouring out of her mouth, and then she went limp in his arms. She didn’t wake up._

_He sobbed and raged, shaking Katniss and pleading for her to wake up._

_She didn’t._

_He tried to call 911,_ anyone _, but the phone lines were down. He couldn’t leave the house because hell was storming outside. He didn’t care about what happened to him, but he couldn’t risk Katniss._

_An hour passed. Katniss woke up. But she wasn’t Katniss._

_He wrestled her to the ground, shocked at her super-human strength. He somehow pushed her into the pantry door, crying as he locked her in._

_He sat in front of the door for almost two days, listening to her bang and rage and shriek with an inhuman tongue. He prayed for death. He considered killing himself. He probably would have if not for a band of looters that shouldered their way into the bakery, demanding he unlock the pantry door._

_“We’re hungry,” one of them said. “Give us your fucking stash, man.”_

_“All right,” Peeta agreed blankly. He unlocked the door._

_Katniss came out. He watched with disinterest as she ripped into their skulls, as she pried little fingers into their fleshy eye sockets. As she ate every last drop of their brains. He must have passed out, because when he woke up, she was staring at him from a puddle of blood, horrified and confused._

_But she was Katniss._

He shakes his head and goes into the bathroom, turning on the hot water, silently thankful that the bakery was lucky enough to have two backup generators. Silently thankful that the bakery exists, period, because without it and its appeal to looters, he would have never figured out what Katniss needed to come alive again.

He bites his lip and trails his fingers in the water, nodding in satisfaction when it’s just the right temperature. There’s nothing Katniss loved more than a fresh bath together.

He checks his solar-powered watch and walks downstairs, unlocking the door to the pantry again and quickly moving down to where Katniss waits for him. He sighs and wrinkles his nose at the sight laid out in front of him, the massacred body that had once belonged to a wispy girl named Annie now sprawled out and bloody and gaping. He promptly ignores the body and focuses on the woman curled in a blood-soaked ball in the corner, her chest rising and falling in quick pants, her eyes moving restlessly behind closed eyelids. He walks over and tenderly unlocks her chains before picking her up in his arms, carrying her reverently back up to their apartment.

“Peeta?” comes a whisper as he walks into their bedroom, and his heart jumps in his chest as he looks down and meets the silver-eyed stare of Katniss. His Katniss. _Katniss._

“Hi, beautiful,” he replies tenderly, his eyes sweeping over her blood-soaked face, her cheeks stained red like the darkest of blushes.

“I’m so tired, Peeta,” she says slowly, her words soft with confusion as he carefully pulls her white slip over her head, leaving her naked and shivering. He learned awhile back that it was easier this way, and the guilt of leaving her down in the basement dressed in nothing more a silk nightgown was far outweighed by his desire to streamline the process of their ritual.

“I know.” The words are uttered quietly, just a soothing rumble as he leads her by the hand to the waiting tub, stripping himself of his clothes before lowering them both into the sunken bath.

“This feels good,” Katniss sighs, leaning back against his chest and trailing her nimble fingers through the water. He wraps his arms around her waist and squeezes, nuzzling her neck with his nose and making a happy noise.

“I missed you so much,” he whispers.

“What?” She laughs with more energy, turning and looking at him over her shoulder. “We’ve been together all day, silly. As if I’d leave you alone on Christmas.

“Of course.” He smiles back, his lips only a little stiff. It’s time. “Merry Christmas, Katniss.”

“Come here,” she murmurs lowly, drawing him to her. Their lips press together softly, and Peeta sighs into her mouth. This. This is home. This is what makes it all worthwhile. Every disgusting, hell-inspired deed that he commits daily. How he can ignore the metallic taste of blood and offal on her lips.

They kiss wetly over her shoulder, the sounds of their love smacking off the tiles of the bathroom wall. “Wait,” Peeta pulls away, trying not to let the worry seep into his voice. It’s just— the  _time_. Everything has to go accordingly. And there’s just no  _time_.

Katniss pouts and tries to draw him near again, but instead he stands and helps her out of the bathtub, trying not to frown when she trips a little over her feet. At how unsteady she already appears.

He helps her towel off and hands her a fluffy robe before doing the same for himself, leading her to the bedroom. He holds her hand and gestures for her to sit on the bed. She cocks her head in confusion and smiles at him when he fumbles at the nightstand, her eyes widening when he drops to one knee, presenting her with the brightly wrapped box.

“Oh,” she says, her lips a perfect circle as she unwraps it. She pops open the velveteen box and stares.

“Katniss, you are my life,” he recites, his eyes raking over her face, love and adoration coating his every word. “I want nothing more than to spend every last second of the rest of my life with you.”

“ _Peet_ a,” she says, reaching down to grasp one of his large hands in her own smaller ones. He tries not to notice the violent tremor shooting through her fingers as he slides on the ring.

“Will you marry me?” he finishes, and she’s on him before the words have scarcely left his tongue. He hates having to rush this. He hates it so damn _much_.

“Yes! Yes!  _Yes_ ,” she cries.

 _Yes,_ he thinks when she drags him up to bed, hastily untying the loose knots of their robes.

 _Yes_ , he thinks when she lowers herself on top of him, not a hint of guilt or self-loathing ruining that perfect moment when they are joined together.

 _Yes,_ he thinks after, holding her close to his heart.  _It’s worth it all_.  _It’s worth tearing this whole fucking city apart. If only we can hold out until there’s a cure. Surely, there’s a cure…there must be more out there like Katniss…_

“I love you,” Katniss whispers, nuzzling his neck. Her nose is bitterly cold, but he barely registers it. “I should call Prim,” she says as an afterthought. “I can’t wait to tell her.”

Peeta winces. He has no idea what happened to Prim or to her mother in the chaotic days after the infection hit. The first few disastrous times that Katniss came back, when he attempted to explain to her what was really happening, the first thing she asked about was Prim. The conversation went horribly, only confusing and terrifying her and sending her into a panic.  _Never again_ , he told himself after the fourth day. He would make only wonderful days for Katniss instead. Peaceful. What she deserves.

“Sure,” he says, his voice impossibly gentle. “We’ll call her tomorrow.” He kisses her cheek sweetly.

She nods and smiles into his chest. “She’ll be so happy for us.”

"I just want to freeze this moment and live in it forever," Peeta says dreamily, twirling a lock of her dark hair around his finger.

"I’ll al-" She stops, a pained expression contorting her face. "I’ll…allow it." She struggles with the words and trips over her tongue. He inhales sharply when he sees it in her mouth, stiff and mottling behind her teeth.

"No," he whispers, rolling onto his side and cupping her cheek, his penetrating stare raking over her face in frantic sweeps. "No, no, no, it’s too soon."

She stares back at him, fear shining through eyes that are already glazing over with a thin, sheeny film. “What’s happening to me?” she slurs.

He strokes her face over and over again, kissing her lips that taste of metal and bile. “Stay with me, Katniss.” A tear slides from his eye and splashes onto the bridge of her nose, and she cringes as if it’s a gunshot. “Please, _just stay with me_.”

"Oh." Her eyes dart back and forth, brief clarity brightening her dulling irises with an unnatural light. "Peeta," she says with difficulty. "You can’t…"

He sobs into her neck, because it’s  _her_. “Katniss, oh  _Katniss_. I love you so much,” he whispers, pulling her close. Her skin is polar and unyielding, but he breathes her in like she is the sweetest of flowers.

She twitches violently in his embrace. “Let me go,” she says faintly, her head lolling on his shoulder, her fingers clutching at him like claws. “Peeta,  _please_.”

"I can’t," he cries in agony, biting his lip so hard that he draws blood. He holds her shoulders down against the bed when she jerks and convulses, and he knows that the clock has run down.

"Please," she chokes out, her eyes rolling back in her head. And then, she’s gone.

He dresses them both quickly, letting out a shuddering sigh and reaching into the drawer of the nightstand, pulling out a set of handcuffs and quickly securing her wrists. He hesitates before pulling out the leather strap, hating this part the most as he slides the gag into her slackened mouth. He used to have longer to prepare, to cry and grieve and rage over her body before the infection took over again, reanimating the shell of Katniss into a mindless, chewing husk. But he knows that it’ll be just minutes now before she’ll snap. He pockets the velveteen box from the nightstand and toys with her fingers for a moment. He bows his head, and counts.

This time, it only takes two minutes, and he frets over the rapid deterioration as he carries her thrashing body back downstairs to her room. He chains her to the secure post and brushes her hair back from her face as she struggles against her binds. He sits behind her and plaits her hair into a perfect braid, knowing tomorrow she will appreciate his efforts.

 _Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow will be bette_ r, he thinks to himself as he turns off the light and locks the door, slowly making his way back upstairs.

Nat King Cole is still crooning at him to have a Merry Little Christmas, and the lights on the tree are blinking merrily, casting green and red shadows over his face before he turns them off. He worries about what he will do when the bakery’s generator finally runs out of juice, and how he will give Katniss her perfect day then.

He makes sure that the shades are drawn tightly before turning on the kitchen light and sitting down at the table, wearily collapsing onto the wooden chair. It creaks under his weight, and the noise is almost welcome in the silence.

He pulls the pearl ring out of his pocket, reverently placing it back inside of its box. He takes great care to wrap it again, using a pair of scissors to make a series of ribbon curls the way his father had shown him years ago.

"You love green," Peeta murmurs, hesitating before adding another curl to the brightly wrapped package.

He stands up and places the present inside the kitchen drawer that Katniss seldom peeks in because she hates washing dishes, nestling it between tea towels where it will wait until tomorrow. He looks at the calendar on the wall, picks up a dying sharpie, and marks a faint, streaky ‘X’ on the date.

April 10th.

"Merry Christmas, Katniss," he says, and turns off the light.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta, Shannon. All mistakes are mine. 
> 
> Credit to the short horror film 'Undying Love' for heavy inspiration.


End file.
